I am trying to keep my eyes open. The buses are chugging by. The cars, too. Men on the street in tennis shoes and blazers are walking briskly. Women in spiked-heels are not yet stumbling in pain, as its only noon. People chat idly or hurriedly on the payphone. Bikes ride the messengers, who’ve an abundance of sweat pouring down their foreheads on a day like this.
I am trying to keep my eyes open. Tourists with roller-luggage, pale skin, and muffin-tops hum-hum their way through my city with the highly attuned ear of someone who’s only just seen their first Broadway show, with their eager-beaver eyes tilted up towards the far reaching roof-tops. Even the roof-tops seem happier, as they bathe in the light they’ve been deprived of for some many long, cold months.
On a day like this, a subaru is a prison, and the cafe is short of all the usual suspects. The man who daily spends his time eyeing my style with all the aptitude of a midget in a high jump competition is no longer here to gawk. He’s probably at the park, where I’d be right now if I could breathe. The woman who complains that the Upper East Side has enough organic denim, what about organic cocaine for Christ’s sake? appears to have blown away with the cool breeze. I can’t help but imagine that she’s probably taken the day off to sit on her roof top and just get stoned.
People in the windows gaze out longingly towards the bright spots not blocked out by the rooftops, making mere sunshine more desirable than sex, and in a long oppressed consumer capital, more desirable than gold. It looks like gold, too, and it feels so warm. Fluffy like the best of pancakes, everyone seems to flounce instead of walk. Everyone has a Spring to their step, because my eyes do not deceive me. Mini-dresses make an occassional appearance on a passerby, and glued to their hems follow the men’s eyes with a certain fever. Chipped toe nail polish peeks out from beneath pant legs, but still draped in the familiar strappings of sandals. Soon this city will move on to shorts and skirts and dresses.
I am trying to keep my eyes open as my city opens it’s eyes and comes alive. The busses chug by. The cars honk in frustration when traffic erupts, but nobody is sad. Nobody is mad or frustrated or in as much of a hurry as they were yesterday or the day before or the day before that, because we’re all too busy thawing out.
A tan no longer seems so excessive when there’s an abundance of sunshine. A recession no longer feels so oppressive when you’re warm inside and out.
